ENLIGHTENING the BRITISH Knowledge, Discovery and the Museum in the Eighteenth Century

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

ENLIGHTENING the BRITISH Knowledge, Discovery and the Museum in the Eighteenth Century ENLIGHTENING THE BRITISH Knowledge, discovery and the museum in the eighteenth century edited by R.G.W. Anderson, Ml. Caygill, A.G. MacGregor and L Syson THE BRITISH MUSEUM PRESS Contents List of illustrations page vii Notes on the contributors ix Introduction 1 Robert Anderson 1 Anticipating the Enlightenment: Museums and galleries in Britain before the British Museum 5 Giles Waterfield 2 Sir Hans Sloane and the European Proto-Museum 11 DeboraJ. Meijers 3 From Private Collection to Public Museum: The Sloane collection at Chelsea and the British Museum in Montagu House 18 Marjorie L Caygill 4 Encyclopaedic Collectors: Ephraim Chambers and Sir Hans Sloane 29 Richard Yeo 5 Wantonness and Use: Ambitions for research libraries in early eighteenth-century England 37 David McKitterick 6 Paper Monuments and Learned Societies: Hooke's Royal Society Repository 49 Lisajardine 7 The Status of Instruments in Eighteenth-Century Cabinets 55 Robert Anderson 8 'Utile et Dulce': Applying knowledge at the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce 62 Celina Fox 9 Wedgwood and his Artists 68 David Bindman 10 Skulls, Mummies and Unicorns' Horns: Medicinal chemistry in early English museums 74 Ken Arnold * 11 Natural History in Eighteenth-Century Museums in Britain 81 HughS. Torrens 12 Linnaeus, Solander and the Birth of a Global Plant Taxonomy 92 Bengtjonsell 13 Joseph Banks, the British Museum and Collections in the Age of Empire 99 Neil Chambers 14 'Ethnography'in the Enlightenment 114 John Mack 15 European Responses to the Sacred Art of India 119 Partha Mitter 16 Dr Richard Mead (1673-1754) and his Circle 127 Ian Jenkins 17 The Rise and Decline of English Neoclassicism 136 Joseph M. Levine 18 Bodies of Enlightenment: Sculpture and the eighteenth-century museum 142 Malcolm Baker 19 Napoleon and Egyptology: Britain's debt to French enterprise 149 T.C.H.James 20 Martin Folkes and the Study of the English Coinage in the Eighteenth Century 158 Hugh Pagan 21 The Antiquary en plein air: Eighteenth-century progress from topographical survey to the threshold of field archaeology 164 Arthur MacCregor 22 Record and Reverie: Representing British antiquity in the eighteenth century 176 Sam Smiles Afterword 185 Keith Thomas Index 187.
Recommended publications
  • Memoirs of the Royal Society. Vol. 1
    MEMOIRS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY. VOL. 1. -------------------- {506} {10th/2}[reversed] SOCIETATI LITERARIӔ SPALDINGENSI D.D. W. Stukeley rector D. Georgii in area Reginensi. 1749. -------------------- Meetings of the royal society {These Memoires were read at the under written Meeting of SGS} {Minute B.5.V} 1. 13 novr. 1740. pa. 4. {15. Mar. 1749./ 56 2. 20. 10. 22. 56.b 3. 11. decr. 12. 29 1750 ibidem 4. 18. 14. 5. April ibidem 5. 8. jan. 1740-1 17. 12 57. 6. 15. 19. 19 5.b 7. 22. 21. 26 ibidem 8. 29. 23. 3 May ibidem 9. 5. feb. 26. 10 ibidem 10. 12. 29. 7 June 58 11. 19. 30. 14 58.b 12. 26. 34. 28 59 13. 4. march 35. 12 July ibidem 19 14. 12. 38. 19. 59.b 15. 19. 41. 26. 60. 16. 26. march 1741 43. 2. August. - b 17. 9 april 46. 9. 62 18. 16 47. 16. ibidem 19. 23 48. 23. 63. 20. 30 49. 30 - b 21. 7 May 51. Sept. 6 - 22. 14 53. 13 23. 12 november 56. 4. October 65 24. 20. 58. 22. Novr. 69 25. 26. 60. 29 ibidem 26. 10. december 63. 13. Decber 70} -------------------- MEMOIRS of the ROYAL SOCIETY. {in LONDON} taken memoriter by Wm: Stukeley {Animas fapientiores fieri quiefcendo} -------------------- [1] MEMOIRS of the Royal Society To Maurice Johnson1 esqr. founder, & per {Pr.} petual secretary of the Gentlemans literary society, in Spalding Lincolnshire. [{who recieved them by the Carryer with other Books from his Bookbinder 9 March 1749/50 & delivered them to Dr Green2 secretary who read the same to the Company at the Societys meetings as numberd and marked before them and in the minutes}]3 For the entertainment of the company that meet weekly, at your Society, held in the old seat of the Hobsons my ancestors; I have transcribed my papers of what I recollect, by memory, after our entertainment, at Crane court4.
    [Show full text]
  • Occasional Papers from the Lindley Library © 2011
    Occasional Papers from The RHS Lindley Library IBRARY L INDLEY L , RHS VOLUME FIVE MARCH 2011 Eighteenth-century Science in the Garden Cover illustration: Hill, Vegetable System, vol. 23 (1773) plate 20: Flower-de-luces, or Irises. Left, Iris tuberosa; right, Iris xiphium. Occasional Papers from the RHS Lindley Library Editor: Dr Brent Elliott Production & layout: Richard Sanford Printed copies are distributed to libraries and institutions with an interest in horticulture. Volumes are also available on the RHS website (www. rhs.org.uk/occasionalpapers). Requests for further information may be sent to the Editor at the address (Vincent Square) below, or by email ([email protected]). Access and consultation arrangements for works listed in this volume The RHS Lindley Library is the world’s leading horticultural library. The majority of the Library’s holdings are open access. However, our rarer items, including many mentioned throughout this volume, are fragile and cannot take frequent handling. The works listed here should be requested in writing, in advance, to check their availability for consultation. Items may be unavailable for various reasons, so readers should make prior appointments to consult materials from the art, rare books, archive, research and ephemera collections. It is the Library’s policy to provide or create surrogates for consultation wherever possible. We are actively seeking fundraising in support of our ongoing surrogacy, preservation and conservation programmes. For further information, or to request an appointment, please contact: RHS Lindley Library, London RHS Lindley Library, Wisley 80 Vincent Square RHS Garden Wisley London SW1P 2PE Woking GU23 6QB T: 020 7821 3050 T: 01483 212428 E: [email protected] E : [email protected] Occasional Papers from The RHS Lindley Library Volume 5, March 2011 B.
    [Show full text]
  • 'The Publishers of the 1723 Book of Constitutions', AQC 121 (2008)
    The Publishers of the 1723 Book of Constitutions Andrew Prescott he advertisements in the issue of the London newspaper, The Evening Post, for 23 February 1723 were mostly for recently published books, including a new edition of the celebrated directory originally compiled by John Chamberlayne, Magnae Britanniae Notitia, and books offering a new cure for scurvy and advice Tfor those with consumption. Among the advertisements for new books in The Evening Post of 23 February 1723 was the following: This Day is publiſh’d, † || § The CONSTITUTIONS of the FREE- MASONS, containing the Hiſtory, Charges, Regulations, &c., of that moſt Ancient and Right Worſhipful Fraternity, for the Uſe of the Lodges. Dedicated to his Grace the Duke of Montagu the laſt Grand Maſter, by Order of his Grace the Duke of Wharton, the preſent Grand Maſter, Authoriz’d by the Grand Lodge of Maſters and War- dens at the Quarterly Communication. Ordered to be publiſh’d and recommended to the Brethren by the Grand Maſter and his Deputy. Printed for J. Senex, and J. Hooke, both over againſt St Dunſtan’s Church, Fleet-ſtreet. An advertisement in similar terms, also stating that the Constitutions had been pub- lished ‘that day’, appeared in The Post Boy of 26 February, 5 March and 12 March 1723 Volume 121, 2008 147 Andrew J. Prescott and TheLondon Journal of 9 March and 16 March 1723. The advertisement (modified to ‘just publish’d’) continued to appear in The London Journal until 13 April 1723. The publication of The Constitutions of the Free-Masons, or the Book of Constitutions as it has become generally known, was a fundamental event in the development of Grand Lodge Freemasonry, and the book remains an indispensable source for the investigation of the growth of Freemasonry in the first half of the eighteenth century.
    [Show full text]
  • Disciplinary Culture
    Disciplinary Culture: Artillery, Sound, and Science in Woolwich, 1800–1850 Simon Werrett This article explores connections between science, music, and the military in London in the first decades of the nineteenth century.1 Rather than look for applications of music or sound in war, it considers some techniques common to these fields, exemplified in practices involving the pendulum as an instrument of regulation. The article begins by exploring the rise of military music in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and then compares elements of this musical culture to scientific transformations during 1 For broad relations between music and science in this period, see: Myles Jackson, Harmonious Triads: Physicians, Musicians, and Instrument Makers in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006); Alexandra Hui, The Psychophysical Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840–1910 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012); Emily I. Dolan and John Tresch, “‘A Sublime Invasion’: Meyerbeer, Balzac, and the Opera Machine,” Opera Quarterly 27 (2011), 4–31; Emily Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004). On science and war in the Napoleonic period, see for example: Simon Werrett, “William Congreve’s Rational Rockets,” Notes & Records of the Royal Society 63 (2009), 35–56; on sound as a weapon, Roland Wittje, “The Electrical Imagination: Sound Analogies, Equivalent Circuits, and the Rise of Electroacoustics, 1863–1939,” Osiris 28 (2013), 40–63, here 55; Cyrus C. M. Mody, “Conversions: Sound and Sight, Military and Civilian,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies, eds. Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp.
    [Show full text]
  • The Architects of Eighteenth Century English Freemasonry, 1720 – 1740
    The Architects of Eighteenth Century English Freemasonry, 1720 – 1740 Submitted by Richard Andrew Berman to the University of Exeter as a Thesis for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Research in History 15 December 2010. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis that is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other university. R A Berman 1 | P a g e Abstract Following the appointment of its first aristocratic Grand Masters in the 1720s and in the wake of its connections to the scientific Enlightenment, ‘Free and Accepted’ Masonry rapidly became part of Britain’s national profile and the largest and arguably the most influential of Britain’s extensive clubs and societies. The new organisation did not evolve naturally from the mediaeval guilds and religious orders that pre-dated it, but was reconfigured radically by a largely self-appointed inner core. Freemasonry became a vehicle for the expression and transmission of the political and religious views of those at its centre, and for the scientific Enlightenment concepts that they championed. The ‘Craft’ also offered a channel through which many sought to realise personal aspirations: social, intellectual and financial. Through an examination of relevant primary and secondary documentary evidence, this thesis seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of contemporary English political and social culture, and to explore the manner in which Freemasonry became a mechanism that promoted the interests of the Hanoverian establishment and connected and bound a number of élite metropolitan and provincial figures.
    [Show full text]
  • Bon Voyage? 250 Years Exploring the Natural World SHNH Summer
    Bon Voyage? 250 Years Exploring the Natural World SHNH summer meeting and AGM in association with the BOC World Museum Liverpool Thursday 14th and Friday 15th June 2018 Abstracts Thursday 14th June Jordan Goodman, Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London In the Wake of Cook? Joseph Banks and His ‘Favorite Projects’ James Cook’s three Pacific voyages spanned the years from 1768 to 1780. These were the first British voyages of exploration in which natural history collecting formed an integral part. Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander were responsible for the collection on the first voyage, HMS Endeavour, between 1768 and 1771; Johann and Georg Forster, collected on the second voyage, HMS Resolution, between 1772 and 1775; and David Nelson continued the tradition on the third voyage, HMS Resolution, from 1776 to 1780. Though Cook’s first voyage brought Banks immense fame, it was the third voyage that initiated a new kind of botanical collecting which he practised for the rest of his life. He called it his ‘Favorite Project’, and it consisted of supplying the royal garden at Kew with living plants from across the globe, to make it the finest botanical collection in the world. Banks appointed David Nelson, a Kew gardener, to collect on Cook’s third voyage. Not only would the King’s garden benefit from a supply of exotic living plants, but the gardeners Banks sent out to collect them would also learn how best to keep the plants alive at sea, for long periods of time and through many different climatic conditions.
    [Show full text]
  • “A Valuable Monument of Mathematical Genius”\Thanksmark T1: the Ladies' Diary (1704–1840)
    Historia Mathematica 36 (2009) 10–47 www.elsevier.com/locate/yhmat “A valuable monument of mathematical genius” ✩: The Ladies’ Diary (1704–1840) Joe Albree ∗, Scott H. Brown Auburn University, Montgomery, USA Available online 24 December 2008 Abstract Our purpose is to view the mathematical contribution of The Ladies’ Diary as a whole. We shall range from the state of mathe- matics in England at the beginning of the 18th century to the transformations of the mathematics that was published in The Diary over 134 years, including the leading role The Ladies’ Diary played in the early development of British mathematics periodicals, to finally an account of how progress in mathematics and its journals began to overtake The Diary in Victorian Britain. © 2008 Published by Elsevier Inc. Résumé Notre but est de voir la contribution mathématique du Journal de Lady en masse. Nous varierons de l’état de mathématiques en Angleterre au début du dix-huitième siècle aux transformations des mathématiques qui a été publié dans le Journal plus de 134 ans, en incluant le principal rôle le Journal de Lady joué dans le premier développement de périodiques de mathématiques britanniques, à finalement un compte de comment le progrès dans les mathématiques et ses journaux a commencé à dépasser le Journal dans l’Homme de l’époque victorienne la Grande-Bretagne. © 2008 Published by Elsevier Inc. Keywords: 18th century; 19th century; Other institutions and academies; Bibliographic studies 1. Introduction Arithmetical Questions are as entertaining and delightful as any other Subject whatever, they are no other than Enigmas, to be solved by Numbers; .
    [Show full text]
  • Redeeming the Truth
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Redeeming the Truth: Robert Morden and the Marketing of Authority in Early World Atlases A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Laura Suzanne York 2013 © Copyright by Laura Suzanne York 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Redeeming the Truth: Robert Morden and the Marketing of Authority in Early World Atlases by Laura Suzanne York Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Muriel C. McClendon, Chair By its very nature as a “book of the world”—a product simultaneously artistic and intellectual—the world atlas of the seventeenth century promoted a totalizing global view designed to inform, educate, and delight readers by describing the entire world through science and imagination, mathematics and wonder. Yet early modern atlas makers faced two important challenges to commercial success. First, there were many similar products available from competitors at home and abroad. Secondly, they faced consumer skepticism about the authority of any work claiming to describe the entire world, in the period before standards of publishing credibility were established, and before the transition from trust in premodern geographic authorities to trust in modern authorities was complete. ii This study argues that commercial world atlas compilers of London and Paris strove to meet these challenges through marketing strategies of authorial self-presentation designed to promote their authority to create a trustworthy world atlas. It identifies and examines several key personas that, deployed through atlas texts and portraits, together formed a self-presentation asserting the atlas producer’s cultural authority.
    [Show full text]
  • Joseph Dalton Hooker
    OS E P H DA LTO N OO KE F R , S j H R, . P I O N E E R S O F P R O G R E SS M E N O F SC I E N C E 801 0 11 81! S . CHAP MAN M.A D . , . S C., F . R .S . JO S E P H D A L T O N H O O K E R 0 M S C B F. M D ET . R. , . , . , C. P F B W c D F R O O ER S S. ROF. , . , . RB OIUB P RO FES SO R 0? m m In THE UNIVERS ITY O F GLASGOW L O N D O N S O C I E T Y F O R P R O M O T I N G C H R I S T I A N K N O W L E D G E NEW YORK : TH E MA CMILLAN COMPANY TE N T CON S . HIS T O RICAL IN T Riov-UCTJON k‘ B IRTH AND EDUCATION FO REI G N TRA V E L A u T HOR smE ' ' H o oRl S P DSI fl’ IO N A s A MA N O R S clE Nc E DA TES RE LATI NG TO THE O FRI EIA-L A N D S CIE N TI FI C; O I! S I R JO SEP H H OOKER P ORTRAI TS BJB LlO GRAPHY CHAPTER I . H I STO R I CAL I NTRO DUCTI O N .
    [Show full text]
  • List of Freemasons from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia Jump To: Navigation , Search
    List of Freemasons From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation , search Part of a series on Masonic youth organizations Freemasonry DeMolay • A.J.E.F. • Job's Daughters International Order of the Rainbow for Girls Core articles Views of Masonry Freemasonry • Grand Lodge • Masonic • Lodge • Anti-Masonry • Anti-Masonic Party • Masonic Lodge Officers • Grand Master • Prince Hall Anti-Freemason Exhibition • Freemasonry • Regular Masonic jurisdictions • Opposition to Freemasonry within • Christianity • Continental Freemasonry Suppression of Freemasonry • History Masonic conspiracy theories • History of Freemasonry • Liberté chérie • Papal ban of Freemasonry • Taxil hoax • Masonic manuscripts • People and places Masonic bodies Masonic Temple • James Anderson • Masonic Albert Mackey • Albert Pike • Prince Hall • Masonic bodies • York Rite • Order of Mark Master John the Evangelist • John the Baptist • Masons • Holy Royal Arch • Royal Arch Masonry • William Schaw • Elizabeth Aldworth • List of Cryptic Masonry • Knights Templar • Red Cross of Freemasons • Lodge Mother Kilwinning • Constantine • Freemasons' Hall, London • House of the Temple • Scottish Rite • Knight Kadosh • The Shrine • Royal Solomon's Temple • Detroit Masonic Temple • List of Order of Jesters • Tall Cedars of Lebanon • The Grotto • Masonic buildings Societas Rosicruciana • Grand College of Rites • Other related articles Swedish Rite • Order of St. Thomas of Acon • Royal Great Architect of the Universe • Square and Compasses Order of Scotland • Order of Knight Masons • Research • Pigpen cipher • Lodge • Corks Eye of Providence • Hiram Abiff • Masonic groups for women Sprig of Acacia • Masonic Landmarks • Women and Freemasonry • Order of the Amaranth • Pike's Morals and Dogma • Propaganda Due • Dermott's Order of the Eastern Star • Co-Freemasonry • DeMolay • Ahiman Rezon • A.J.E.F.
    [Show full text]
  • Joseph Banks Conference Programme
    Joseph Banks: Science, Culture and Exploration, 1743–1820 An international conference organized via the AHRC-funded ‘Joseph Banks and the Re-Making of the Indo-Pacific World’ Network Thursday to Saturday, 14–16 September 2017 Venues: The Royal Society and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew Thursday 14 September Venue: The Royal Society 09.00-09.30 Registration 09.30-10.30 Welcome and Introduction Chair: Simon Werrett, University College London Keynote lecture David Igler, University of California, Irvine The questions they asked: Joseph Banks and natural scientists in the Pacific Ocean 1 10.30–11.00 Tea and coffee 11.00–13.00 Chair: Nigel Rigby, National Maritime Museum Sünne Juterczenka, University of Göttingen Beyond the ‘common Centre of we discoverers’: Joseph Banks and the meanings of maritime exploration in eighteenth-century Europe Tim Fulford, De Montfort University Humphry Davy all at sea: Banks’s best protégé and the Navy Ekaterina Heath, University of Sydney Sir Joseph Banks and British botanical diplomacy 13.00–14.00 Lunch 14.00–15.30 Chair: Anna Agnarsdóttir, University of Iceland Dominik Hünniger, University of Göttingen ‘le rendez-vous des personnes qui cultivent les sciences’ – 32 Soho Square as the contact zone for European naturalists and global specimens in the late eighteenth century John Gascoigne, University of New South Wales Joseph Banks and indigenous scientific intermediaries 15.30–16.00 Tea and coffee 16.00–17.30 Chair: Dominik Hünniger, University of Göttingen Helen McCormack, Glasgow School of Art Banks and Hunter:
    [Show full text]
  • The Flower Chain the Early Discovery of Australian Plants
    The Flower Chain The early discovery of Australian plants Hamilton and Brandon, Jill Douglas Hamilton Duchess of University of Sydney Library Sydney, Australia 2002 http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit © University of Sydney Library. The texts and images are not to be used for commercial purposes without permission Source Text: Prepared with the author's permission from the print edition published by Kangaroo Press Sydney 1998 All quotation marks are retained as data. First Published: 1990 580.994 1 Australian Etext Collections at botany prose nonfiction 1940- women writers The flower chain the early discovery of Australian plants Sydney Kangaroo Press 1998 Preface Viewing Australia through the early European discovery, naming and appreciation of its flora, gives a fresh perspective on the first white people who went to the continent. There have been books on the battle to transform the wilderness into an agriculturally ordered land, on the convicts, on the goldrush, on the discovery of the wealth of the continent, on most aspects of settlement, but this is the first to link the story of the discovery of the continent with the slow awareness of its unique trees, shrubs and flowers of Australia. The Flower Chain Chapter 1 The Flower Chain Begins Convict chains are associated with early British settlement of Australia, but there were also lighter chains in those grim days. Chains of flowers and seeds to be grown and classified stretched across the oceans from Botany Bay to Europe, looping back again with plants and seeds of the old world that were to Europeanise the landscape and transform it forever.
    [Show full text]